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Imagine being able to override Mother Nature and hand-pick the physical appearance and intellectual traits of your unborn child. Well, thanks to modern science, what may seem far-fetched now could be the norm for parents 25 years down the road.
They are so lovable, so innocent, 10 little fingers, 10 tiny toes, to every parent’s eye, pure perfection. But what if you could tinker with perfection, choose your baby’s hair color, eye color, brainpower, how athletic they’ll be.
You have specified hazel eyes, dark hair and fair skin…
What seems like science fiction in the movie Gattaca is already happening. Through invitro fertilization, parents can actually choose to have a girl or a boy.
We can already look for the genes that, er, influence all sorts of trivial traits, like our eye color or hair color. In 25 years, some geneticists believe parents will be able to select for genes that help with intelligence, memory, even talents like playing the piano.
The question is whether or not people want to use the technology for that purpose.
We posed the question at a gathering of pregnant moms and found a lot of resistance.
I think once you started choosing, you know, how your baby should look like, and what it should be or what the sex should be. You take the excitement out of the unexpected ….
But here is the thing, when we asked the mummies that if it would be ok to change their baby’s genetics to avoid a disease, the answers changed.
I would say Yes. But again I’m being a hypocrite, but I think health is the most important part.
And that ability for a parent to shape their child’s health may be the biggest advance 25 years from now. Theoretically science could provide the genes to make babies super-resistant to diseases. Here’s how, a few years back, scientists mapped out the human genome, it’s a lot like a giant codebook, a catalogue of the genes in the human body.
We have all the information, and now everybody is poring over it with computers and trying to figure out what it all means.
Experimenting on mice, scientists are trying to figure out which genes do what. They’ve already isolated genes that make some people more susceptible to certain cancers. Eventually parents would be able not only to choose an embryo without that defective cancer gene but to go in and change the genetic code.
We've perfected that technology in mice, there is absolutely no reason why that same technology couldn’t be applied to human embryos.
No reason except for ethical concerns that genetic modification could change everything.
Our view of children, our view of parenthood, our view of our relationships with each other, and therefore our view of what, what it means to be human. And we don’t really want to mess with them, I think, until we are very, very convinced that the benefits outweigh the risks.
And who will get the benefit? In 25 years, many worry only rich Americans will be able to afford genetic tinkering.
There is going to be a growing gap between the haves and have-nots, and so the children of the rich really might be beautiful and the children of ordinary people won’t have access to the same sorts of expensive technologies.
Will that happen in 25 years? It all depends on how people decide to handle the technology.
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VOCABULARY
1.override v. –rode; -riden; -riding 1. to ride over or across 2: to prevail over; also: to set aside <override a vote>
2. trait n.1.a distinguishing quality (as of personality) 2. an inherited characteristic
3. tinker v to repair or adjust something in an unskillful or experimental manner
4. athletic adj. 1: of or relating to athletes or athletics 2: VIGOROUS; ACTIVE 3: STURDY, MUSCULAR
5. in vitro adv or adj. outside the living body and n an artificial environment
in vitro fertilization
6. hypocrite n. a person who pretends to have moral standards or opinions that they do not actually have: Charles was a liar and a hypocrite who married her for money.
7. pore pored; poring v. 1. to read studiously or attentively <pore over a book> 2. PONDER, REFLECT
8. susceptible adj. of such a nature as to permit
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